Tuesday, March 4, 2008

A Carnival of Death-Defying Geologists

Well, I've just sat down to relax after a long day of work, and find out there's a kind of geological meme going around about death-defying geological experiences. Geotripper, what have you started?! (Silver Fox at http://highway8a.blogspot.com/)

Well, this has been a lot of fun seeing this meme take life and bounce around the geoblogosphere! I had no idea I was starting something...I will go ahead and call it a one-day long Accretionary Wedge Carnival (the Special Edition?) and tabulate the responses I have come across:

Silver Fox, in Defying Death? (noted above) tells a story of scary helicopter rides, and spending a night stranded on a cold mountainside in Nevada...

Chris talks about getting stuck on cliffs with Geologists in peril - and liking it?...his post includes a number of additional stories in the comments section...including one or two souls from outside geology who sound jealous...

Mel at Ripples in Sand has some links to pics of one of the most hair-raising trails in China that I've ever seen (More on Death Defying Feats )...

Julian's story reminds me of the nearest geology-related brush-with-death events that I can recall. The summer of 1994 was one of my greatest years, and yet one in which disaster followed me everywhere. Almost lost my wife, almost lost a student, almost stepped on three rattlesnakes simultaneously (WHAT were they up to?). The same day I lost the student and stepped on the snake, we were driving north on Utah State Highway 191 near the town of Blanding at approximately 55 mph, when our Ford Astro Van made contact with a deer that jumped over the crash barrier without warning. Neither the deer nor the van could be regarded the winner of the encounter. The driver of the van kept us in a straight line (avoiding a head-on collision with opposing traffic), but the radiator, air conditioner, water pump and various sundry engine parts were destroyed. To their credit, the mechanics in Blanding got the van running again for only $1,300 (which by amazing coincidence was how much in cash and travelers checks I was carrying at the time!). We got the van back, drove out to meet the rest of the crew, and promptly ran over a rock, busting the exhaust manifold. We sounded like a dragster the entire 1,500 mile trip home. And the transportation office at school was not too happy with us.

Maria at Green Gabbro (Delicious Internet Noms) adds a photo of lava escapades; and those lava benches actually are kind of terrifying...we know that they won't collapse when WE are on them, but......

And a late update...check out one of our newest geobloggers at Death defying geologists. As Geology Happens! says, he's new at blogging, unlike, say, me who has been haunting the geoblogosphere now for an entire two months. Watch out for falling rocks!

I heard a good car accident yarn from waaay back in the day, when the Caltech geology department owned a woodie station wagon. They rolled it on a field trip... and on each roll, a student fell out, bruised but basically unharmed.

About Me

I am a teacher of geology at Modesto Junior College and former president of the National Association of Geoscience Teachers, Far Western Section. I have led field trips all over the western United States, and a few excursions overseas, but my homebase is the Sierra Nevada, the Great Valley, and the Coast Ranges of California.